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healingmirthI was struck with the urge this morning to write American Idiot fic where Will and Tunny are girls. I tried to genderswap Johnny, too, but the problem is I don’t actually like Johnny, and making the character female made me want to yell at her even more than I already want to yell at Johnny.
In honor of the fact that I think I have word docs on this computer, in addition to the google docs list spiraling out of control:
viascaramouche
When you see this, post an excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
It’s false advertising to call most of these works in progress, but they’re certainly all unfinished! Forty of 'em, and that doesn't include the files that are three sentences or shorter, of which there are many
Weevil Navarro/Veronica Mars, ennui
Weevil Navarro was not a man who waited. He was certainly not a man who skulked. The conditions of his parole had even cut back on his loitering, so he was unused to standing around with nothing to do. Two short years as leader of the PCHers had formed up the portion of his personality that said his time was valuable, that others existed at his convenience, not the other way around. Current occupation and company excepted.
Jim/Pam, The Office ~season 2 or so.
He had known where she was. He should have called. There was no way that the Stamford branch was as bad as Scranton. He should have known she would need rescuing. Or if not, if he thought she was fine, he should have called to talk. They were best friends. She was a funny girl. “Who doesn’t like to hear funny stories?” she thinks. Over the years she had honed her cadence for maximum effect, and it was wasted now without him.
Karen and Andy, The Office, ~season two or so.
By noon, her rushed Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast is a distant memory, and maybe she's a little weak with low blood-sugar when she tells her smarmy and yet slightly frantic office-mate that yes, she’d love it if he’d take her out to lunch. When Andy says that he knows the perfect place, just around the corner, it sounds like an even better idea, because she doesn’t know anything about downtown Stamford besides the mall, and it’ll save her the trouble of finding a regular place for lunch.
Greer and Eli, SGU, gaming
"I had an active imagination. Sue me."
"I imagined a lot of stuff when I was a kid," Greer says. "I didn't write any damn rulebooks about it, though."
Lorne/Zelenka, SGA, accident
"Do you miss your family, Major Lorne? Your parents?" Zelenka's question was especially unexpected. He hadn't looked up from his tablet for more than a few seconds at a time since they'd landed on the planet.
Evan wasn't prepared to respond to chit-chat, and in the few seconds it took to even process the question, he turned towards the watery horizon. As long as it was his job to keep his eye out for threats, a little delay in responding was acceptable.
Zelenka cleared his throat and carried on as if Lorne wasn't ignoring him. "Today is my father's birthday. The first year on Atlantis was the first I had not spoken to him. I suppose he's used to it by now."
"There's people I miss," Evan replied, eventually. "Atlantis is worth it, though."
Max/Alec, Dark Angel, "follow the leader"
Once they settle into Terminal City, it’s a little like the old days at Manticore, with an eerily almost-pleasant nostalgia. They grew up with order, and even if there’s freedom here among their own kind, there’s also a legitimate need for duty rosters and supply chains to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.
Everyone says they believe it’s possible, but Max is the only one of them who already knows how this can work. She’s the only one of the fabled class of escapees who’s willing to stick around, something about her time in Seattle makes her comfortable with roots and responsibilities in a way that her brothers and sisters are unwilling or unable to.
Alec’s content to play follow-the-leader as long as there’s a place for him here.
Dan/Casey, Sports Night, sunrise
Dan believed in hard work, and in faking it til he made it. On a date, first impressions, first kisses, were important, but Dan had learned that if he timed it right, that there was a good change that he could get a second chance if he blew the first one.
He didn't think Casey was gonna give him a second chance if he screwed it up.
Fraser/Kowalski, heatwave, waterfight
It didn’t help matters that Ray refused to get in the car with his clothes sopping wet. As luck would have it, they were only two miles from Ray’s apartment and his shift was coming to an end.
“At least they’ll be looking at the guy wearing wool in the middle of summer instead of the dork in the squishy shoes.”
Ben fought the urge to tug at his collar at the reminder. It was unfortunate that he’d needed to wear the full uniform, but it was the only day this week, and it was simply an issue of mind over matter to adjust himself to it. When he suggested to Ray that he might accomplish the same results with a little effort, Ray mumbled something that sounded uncomplimentary and squelched off down the street towards home.
Abby/Eliot "what I do"
Her new friend - and she might be misguided about people sometimes, but she's betting his name is not really Tony Stewart - sits with his back to the wall, facing the door, the way Tony does anytime they go out together. She hasn't guessed 'cop' yet
He'd given her 20 chances to guess right. She'd never said she'd stop guessing. He'd never said he'd tell her if she guessed right. He had accepted without comment her assertion of her occupation as "Necromancer" and she was still a little disappointed. She had backstory prepared and everything.
However, her first three guesses had been 'President of the United States' 'Astronaut' and 'T. Boone Pickens' so she's pretty sure they're on the same page about this.
John McClane, Die Hard, McClane family Christmases
The next year, John flat out refused to travel, and refused to host anyone who would have to travel to see them. For the first time since Holly had met him, he had his Christmas shopping finished by the first week in December. His captain hadn’t been sure whether John was serious when he said that giving him the week around Christmas off would save the department money, but he gave it to him anyway.
John/Matt, McClane-bot angstfic
The steady low hum of the computers changes subtly as Matt sits down at his desk and bumps the mouse. The bluish light from the monitor joins the sodium-yellow cutting in through the blinds.
A rumbling voice greets him. "Mornin' kid."
Matt replies in protest, a standard variation on their standard greeting. "Fuck off, old man. I've been grown up for years."
A deep laugh echoes in the small room. "Suck it, Farrell. You'll be wet behind the ears til the day you die."
Matt/John, amnesiafic
His next stop was an apartment building, not his own, and Danielson took the bags inside with him. When he didn’t return after a few minutes, John told Ramirez to call in their location and recent activity and ask whether they should settle in to wait, and got out of the car to scan the residents listing by the buzzers. As he rounded the hood of the car, John had a split-second to register a ball of flame behind the glass doors before he was blown back by the shockwave, and all thought of empathy with Danielson flew out of his head.
Matt/John post-movie h/c
Three months earlier, John would have given a lot to hear his daughter asking for his help. Hell, he would have given a lot to hear his daughter's voice. He tried to keep that in mind and keep a hold on his temper at being asked to babysit Matt Farrell once again.
"Honey, I just don't think it's a good idea for me to go snooping around in his life. Just last week, you said he was okay."
He hears her snort of laughter, and can imagine her rolling her eyes to go along with it. "Exactly. He's okay. He's fine." Her sarcastic emphasis on the words carries loud and clear through the phone line. "Did he strike you as the type of guy who is ever just fine?"
Matt/John, slight movie AU
Despite John’s best efforts, the kid refuses to become part of the white noise of the city. Loud Mrs. Hanrahan in 1B, the Latino kids from across the street who are always running around on afternoons and weekends, the handful of businessmen that John recognizes on sight, they all conform to expectations and are dismissed from conscious consideration. Patterns are John’s bread and butter as a detective, and the skills that serve him so well at work bleed over into his private life as well. Anomalies represent trouble – unexpected noises, vehicles out of place, people changing their routines.
John/Matt PWP "corduroy"
What Matt was, was soft. Not squishy soft, or girly soft, just. Comfortable. And soft was not an adjective that came up a lot in John's daily life anymore. Neither was fuzzy, for that matter.
And damned if John could tell how he managed it. John's own clothes were comfortable, but some of them were older than Matt. Matt didn't own a single thing that dated earlier than July
He dressed entirely in worn jeans, and ancient t-shirts and sweatshirts. Fall had swooped in on the city while John was busy doing other things, and suddenly Matt was all flannel shirts and corduroy pants and thick socks that deadened the uneven beat of Matt's footsteps in the rare moments when he limped more than a few feet from his desk or his bed.
John had gone through at least ten years of marriage with Holly without having a conversation about shopping. He wasn't going to start now.
John/Matt, underwear
If Matt had been asked, he would've said that John McClane was not a boxer short kind of guy. Hell, if he was McClane, he'd wear a goddamned cup 24/7, because, seriously. As it turned out, "Boxers or Briefs" was about the only question he hadn't been asked about McClane in the past couple months, but he'd given it more thought that he probably should've. Matt hadn't expected to ever have first-hand knowledge of McClane's underwear preferences, unless there was some sort of national emergency that required his pants.
Gabriel and Trey, recruiting
Like all good revolutionaries, they met in a cafe. Trey was in the midst of a debate, well on its way to argument, with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. As he would later learn, it was not Trey's first girlfriend, so not his first ex-, but low enough numbers that he still hadn't quite seen the breakup coming.
He was ripe for the picking, with promises of money, and power, the new elite.
He was gesturing with, or at, a newspaper. Quaint, Thomas thought, and that nearly took Trey out of the running, because, seriously, a newspaper?
Brad/Nate/Walt PWP, "birthday"
Walt's shooting back a good-natured "Fuck you," before he realizes who'd spoken, but then he finishes it off with a belated, "uh, sir?" which might be a question about whether Nate is going to kick his ass, or have someone kick his ass, or maybe whether he should be calling Nate sir still. Brad watches the thoughts flicker across Walt's face like one of those stick-drawing animations, but then he claps a hand on Walt's shoulder and squeezes, a hand-brake to make his thoughts skid to a halt.
"Did Ray...?" Walt broke off, and made a gesture that could have indicated any number of Ray's habitual activities. "Because he said he wouldn't tell anyone."
Ray/Walt, women's underwear
Ray had been thinking about it all day, ways of making it easier for Walt to stay at his place without having to fly the flag of shame that was wearing last night's clothes home in the morning. He'd been thinking about what it'd be like to just fuck, to engage in some hurried, unplanned, disastrously dirty sex without Walt bitching at him later about how he was going to have to scrub jizz off of his t-shirt. That was a totally valid reason to get turned on while standing, alone, in front of his dresser.
The panties he was holding when Walt walked in, those were just a coincidence.
Brad/Nate and others, werewolves
Just as Brad starts easing up from the snow to make a move, the other teams report that they've got lupine company, too. On the one hand, it sucks, but on the other, at least Brad's not the one who's going to be scuttling their night's work. A branch cracks behind him, fuckin' Trombley, and when Brad spares a glance over his shoulder, the growling intensifies. He clears his knife from its sheath, and then there's a single shot, maybe a rifle from a couple hundred meters out and it echoes back from the stone walls, before mixing with what sounds like three or four rounds from a beretta.
The shots take just seconds to get a reaction from inside the compound, but Brad's already in a crouch, ready to get some speed on. There's a call to converge on Command's position, to get back to the vehicles, and that's... If that's fucking Christesen making the call, like it sounds, they are six kinds of fucked. When he spares a half second to glance back for the wolf, it's gone.
Brad/Nate, the one where Nate upends all of Brad’s carefully made plans.
When Brad was fourteen, when he hit his growth spurt, he stuck through three more agonizing weeks of spring soccer practice, demonstrating all the grace of a day-old giraffe on roller-skates, before he quit. The cross-country coach was happy to have him, and Brad was happy to have something to do that was no more complicated than putting on foot in front of the other, over and over.
When he spent every day too skinny, tripping over his own feet, missing the days when his body did what he wanted it to, when he needed it to, and he looked at the strength, the competence, the confidence that the Corps promised to its recruits, and the choice wasn't even a choice.
Brad/Nate schoolteacher AU
The first day of school, Nate got up in front of his class, and wrote his name on the board with a piece of chalk that squeaked, just like every teacher in a bad high-school comedy. Then he turned around and said, "Good morning. I'm Mr. Fick," because the school board discouraged familiarity with the students. Then he said, "and this year we're going to learn everything about the history of the world, so we'd better get started." He said it with a smile, hoping for a little shared humor at the obvious overstatement. He didn't get it, and that was when he started planning his life for what he was going to do next.
Brad/Nate, gaming AU
Nate rocketed up the stairs, his usual stealthy attempts at avoiding his neighbors abandoned in favor of speed. He got the door to his apartment unlocked in what had to be record time, and dumped his bag by the door, not bothering to turn on the lights before he made his way to his desk. A tap of the spacebar woke his computer up, and revealed that Brad's earlier text remained true: the server listing was red all the way down, which meant the devs must have broken something in the first patch and had to try again.
Actually, Brad's message had said, "Because some overpaid, undertrained donkeyfucker refuses to take advantage of a week of data from a stable test environment, our raiding will be delayed this evening." There was the slimmest chance that Brad had been referring to some fuck-up in his office that meant he was going to be late, but it appeared not.
Nate wouldn't like to be the guy whose mistake stood between Brad and patch-day raiding, whether it was someone Brad knew or someone who worked 800 miles away, but if it was a developer, it was less likely that Brad would make them cry.
Ray/Walt, silence
Ray lands on his knees in front of Walt in the kitchen, and almost loses before he starts when his left knee hits the tile too hard and he has to bite back a curse. He could have planned this better, waited for when Walt was on the couch and Ray could kneel on the rug, but it's been two days since Walt last lounged on the couch watching TV, late-night or otherwise. Walt sits at their wobbly kitchen table to eat breakfast and dinner, focused on it like it's his job. He doesn't stand at the counter eating over the sink anymore, which probably would have been faster, but also left him open to Ray coming up behind him and boxing him in.
Zoe/Wash fixit
Late one night, Zoe is as close to deep sleep as her reflexes will let her get when there's this "ooOOooOOoo" sound. Zoe wakes enough to mumble "quit it, Wash" and buries her head under the pillow.
The next morning, she's sitting in the galley and got her hands wrapped around a mug of something warm and supposedly invigorating, and Wash sits down across from her. She screams. Shrieks, actually, like a tightly-wound 9-year-old-princess who's just had a spider dropped down her dress.
Wash jumps up, spins to look behind him like he's expecting there's Reavers breathing down his neck. "What? WHAT?" he yells, and then suddenly every body on Serenity is gathered in the one room, and the good news is, they're all staring at Wash too, so Zoe's not alone in her crazy.
Jensen/Cougar, clubbing
Jensen looks up as Cougar is weaving through the tables on his way to the dance floor, and he freezes for a second before digging his phone out of his pocket. He's cursing at it by the time Cougar is in earshot, and when Jensen looks up, he's a little apologetic and a lot confused. "I'm so sorry man, I don't - I shouldn't have missed a call, even in here. I shouldn't miss a call anywhere, unless every net in a two-state radius goes down. Do I-"
Cougar cuts him off with a dismissive wave. "Nada," he says. "You missed nothing." From a foot away, there is a faint scent of tequila underlying the cloud of alcohol that surrounds him.
Jensen/Cougar, guns
Jensen just wasn’t a gun person. They were useful tools, and he always more than passed any qualifications on a new weapon, or how wouldn’t have a spot on the team, no matter how good he was with a computer. If he didn’t have a gun strapped to his person, his first instinct in an emegency wasn’t to locate a firearm. He just wasn’t a gun person, like how some guys are into cars or bikes and some just aren’t.
Gambit/Wolverine, movieverse amnesia
Logan pushed him up against the wall with a hand at his neck. He asked if Remy was different.
Remy laughed, and rubbed his leg, the only part of him not pinned, against Logan's. Then he laughed again at the quickly-smothered reaction on Logan's face. "How different you want Remy to be?" he purred, and then quieted with a grin when Logan pushed off the wall and growled.
Tunny/Will, or maybe gen
Johnny was up and down, poetry readings, crowded clubs, passed out in the park at sunrise, talking to himself when he wandered the streets at 11am on a Tuesday or 3am Saturday night. Tunny suggested that they should find jobs before the money ran out. Johnny told him to believe in the dream.
They were a two-legged stool without Will, and all that trying to balance exhausted the fuck out of Tunny. An army on the move, though, that was rock-solid, a fuckin’ monolith, not to be trifled with. He could fall in with the ranks and let the mob carry him along; the prospect of not having to make his own judgment calls appealed as much as the recruiter’s promises of glory.
Tunny/Will, left behind
Will was going off to college, and that was fine, that was great, that had been the plan all along, and they’d talk on the phone, and he’d come home over winter break. And when he was home over winter break, it’d be just like if they’d been hanging out the whole time, and it’s not like anything interesting would have happened if Will had stayed.
That was the plan, and it was a good plan, but the plan hadn’t accounted for the hollow feeling in Tunny’s stomach when he stood in his driveway and watched Will jog across the street to his house for the last time before he and his parents got on the road.
It’d been a long time since anyone had left, and it turned out that Tunny wasn’t quite as prepared to handle it as he thought.
Tunny/Will, bondage
When Will opens his eyes again, Tunny’s still leaning patiently against the dresser, watching him. “So, what?” Will says. “Planning on keeping me tied up so you can torture me by eating breakfast without me?” His stomach gurgles again in punctuation, and he swallows the saliva welling in his mouth. The way that Tunny smiles at that is a little staggering, which Will blames on being turned on and confused and hungry and still only half-awake, rather than on the fact that he is head-over-fucking-heels in love with the fucker who’s apparently stealing his clothes and holding him prisoner in his own bedroom. Will’s totally put his emo poetry years behind him, and that means not turning into a puddle every time his boyfriend smiles at him.
Arthur/Eames, first date
To be precise, it happens like this: Arthur is walking along Beecham, considering whether he wants to go home and read, or maybe go for a run, see if he can find a soccer game at the park, when Eames walks out of a storefront gallery and nearly skids to a halt at the sight of him. It takes Eames long enough to recover that Arthur notices that a recovery happened, which speaks to the fact that whatever Eames is doing, he wasn’t worried about surprises. This means he wasn’t prepared for surprises, which means it definitely wasn’t illegal and probably wasn’t immoral.
Arthur/Eames, Eames lifts things so Arthur has to come back and get them
He spends three days off-site, at a library, at corporate headquarters for their target's key rival in the industry, and walking around a resort villa where the subject had proposed to his wife, and he doesn't misplace or forget any of his things.
When he comes back to the loft to walk through two refined mazes, he leaves his tie and then his cell phone again, twice in the next three days. The next morning he sends a vial of the Somnacin off to a contact at one lab, and a vial of his blood off to another. He thinks about going in for a physical, and maybe about keeping a daily journal to make sure that he's not losing time or forgetting anything else.
And then one night, when Arthur had run through his end-of-day checklist, twice, and still had to turn back around. Eames invited him out to dinner at a family-style Italian restaurant where they ordered far too much food and Eames tried to drown Arthur in local late-vintage red wine.
Arthur/Eames, lonely!Eames
In mid-December, Arthur gets a postcard with a picture of the Rose Parade from his mother, postmarked Pasadena. Arthur’s mother can be found in Boca Raton from October through March. The card finds him via the PO Box in Los Angeles, and it's the closest thing he's likely to ever get to an invitation.
It is undeniably stupid. Arthur is tempted to show up just to tell Eames how stupid it is.
Arthur/Eames, wedding jitters
He's halfway through a pack of Marlboros even though he hasn't smoked for years. It would have been a bottle of cheap vodka, but one of the joys of travelling to a state where Eames is preparing to put his legal name on a legal document to legally tie himself to another man for so long as they both shall live is not being able to buy liquor before noon on a Sunday.
Arthur/Eames, werewolf
It was only by sheer luck that he hadn't managed to imprint one of the many vapid girls who'd caught his attention when he was young and stupid and hormonal, when anyone with a beating heart had smelled like true love.
If he was being honest, early retirement was looking like something of a necessity. The older he got, while more and more of his contemporaries were rolling around like puppies in the park with their children, the more that the urge to claim something as his grew.
By the time that Arthur came into his life, it was nearly overwhelming.
Arthur/Eames, small town
Eames comes in looking for books published by local authors, local historical societies, because the historical society is only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and he had the poor luck to arrive in town on a Wednesday morning.
"Oh, no," he says. "I don't expect to be in the area above a week or two." He looks around at the empty tables, and then over his shoulder to the also-empty study rooms opposite the desk. "It's not a problem that I work here, is it?
Oh, thank you, God Arthur thinks, but what he says is, "No problem at all."
In honor of the fact that I think I have word docs on this computer, in addition to the google docs list spiraling out of control:
via
scaramoucheWhen you see this, post an excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
It’s false advertising to call most of these works in progress, but they’re certainly all unfinished! Forty of 'em, and that doesn't include the files that are three sentences or shorter, of which there are many
Weevil Navarro/Veronica Mars, ennui
Weevil Navarro was not a man who waited. He was certainly not a man who skulked. The conditions of his parole had even cut back on his loitering, so he was unused to standing around with nothing to do. Two short years as leader of the PCHers had formed up the portion of his personality that said his time was valuable, that others existed at his convenience, not the other way around. Current occupation and company excepted.
Jim/Pam, The Office ~season 2 or so.
He had known where she was. He should have called. There was no way that the Stamford branch was as bad as Scranton. He should have known she would need rescuing. Or if not, if he thought she was fine, he should have called to talk. They were best friends. She was a funny girl. “Who doesn’t like to hear funny stories?” she thinks. Over the years she had honed her cadence for maximum effect, and it was wasted now without him.
Karen and Andy, The Office, ~season two or so.
By noon, her rushed Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast is a distant memory, and maybe she's a little weak with low blood-sugar when she tells her smarmy and yet slightly frantic office-mate that yes, she’d love it if he’d take her out to lunch. When Andy says that he knows the perfect place, just around the corner, it sounds like an even better idea, because she doesn’t know anything about downtown Stamford besides the mall, and it’ll save her the trouble of finding a regular place for lunch.
Greer and Eli, SGU, gaming
"I had an active imagination. Sue me."
"I imagined a lot of stuff when I was a kid," Greer says. "I didn't write any damn rulebooks about it, though."
Lorne/Zelenka, SGA, accident
"Do you miss your family, Major Lorne? Your parents?" Zelenka's question was especially unexpected. He hadn't looked up from his tablet for more than a few seconds at a time since they'd landed on the planet.
Evan wasn't prepared to respond to chit-chat, and in the few seconds it took to even process the question, he turned towards the watery horizon. As long as it was his job to keep his eye out for threats, a little delay in responding was acceptable.
Zelenka cleared his throat and carried on as if Lorne wasn't ignoring him. "Today is my father's birthday. The first year on Atlantis was the first I had not spoken to him. I suppose he's used to it by now."
"There's people I miss," Evan replied, eventually. "Atlantis is worth it, though."
Max/Alec, Dark Angel, "follow the leader"
Once they settle into Terminal City, it’s a little like the old days at Manticore, with an eerily almost-pleasant nostalgia. They grew up with order, and even if there’s freedom here among their own kind, there’s also a legitimate need for duty rosters and supply chains to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.
Everyone says they believe it’s possible, but Max is the only one of them who already knows how this can work. She’s the only one of the fabled class of escapees who’s willing to stick around, something about her time in Seattle makes her comfortable with roots and responsibilities in a way that her brothers and sisters are unwilling or unable to.
Alec’s content to play follow-the-leader as long as there’s a place for him here.
Dan/Casey, Sports Night, sunrise
Dan believed in hard work, and in faking it til he made it. On a date, first impressions, first kisses, were important, but Dan had learned that if he timed it right, that there was a good change that he could get a second chance if he blew the first one.
He didn't think Casey was gonna give him a second chance if he screwed it up.
Fraser/Kowalski, heatwave, waterfight
It didn’t help matters that Ray refused to get in the car with his clothes sopping wet. As luck would have it, they were only two miles from Ray’s apartment and his shift was coming to an end.
“At least they’ll be looking at the guy wearing wool in the middle of summer instead of the dork in the squishy shoes.”
Ben fought the urge to tug at his collar at the reminder. It was unfortunate that he’d needed to wear the full uniform, but it was the only day this week, and it was simply an issue of mind over matter to adjust himself to it. When he suggested to Ray that he might accomplish the same results with a little effort, Ray mumbled something that sounded uncomplimentary and squelched off down the street towards home.
Abby/Eliot "what I do"
Her new friend - and she might be misguided about people sometimes, but she's betting his name is not really Tony Stewart - sits with his back to the wall, facing the door, the way Tony does anytime they go out together. She hasn't guessed 'cop' yet
He'd given her 20 chances to guess right. She'd never said she'd stop guessing. He'd never said he'd tell her if she guessed right. He had accepted without comment her assertion of her occupation as "Necromancer" and she was still a little disappointed. She had backstory prepared and everything.
However, her first three guesses had been 'President of the United States' 'Astronaut' and 'T. Boone Pickens' so she's pretty sure they're on the same page about this.
John McClane, Die Hard, McClane family Christmases
The next year, John flat out refused to travel, and refused to host anyone who would have to travel to see them. For the first time since Holly had met him, he had his Christmas shopping finished by the first week in December. His captain hadn’t been sure whether John was serious when he said that giving him the week around Christmas off would save the department money, but he gave it to him anyway.
John/Matt, McClane-bot angstfic
The steady low hum of the computers changes subtly as Matt sits down at his desk and bumps the mouse. The bluish light from the monitor joins the sodium-yellow cutting in through the blinds.
A rumbling voice greets him. "Mornin' kid."
Matt replies in protest, a standard variation on their standard greeting. "Fuck off, old man. I've been grown up for years."
A deep laugh echoes in the small room. "Suck it, Farrell. You'll be wet behind the ears til the day you die."
Matt/John, amnesiafic
His next stop was an apartment building, not his own, and Danielson took the bags inside with him. When he didn’t return after a few minutes, John told Ramirez to call in their location and recent activity and ask whether they should settle in to wait, and got out of the car to scan the residents listing by the buzzers. As he rounded the hood of the car, John had a split-second to register a ball of flame behind the glass doors before he was blown back by the shockwave, and all thought of empathy with Danielson flew out of his head.
Matt/John post-movie h/c
Three months earlier, John would have given a lot to hear his daughter asking for his help. Hell, he would have given a lot to hear his daughter's voice. He tried to keep that in mind and keep a hold on his temper at being asked to babysit Matt Farrell once again.
"Honey, I just don't think it's a good idea for me to go snooping around in his life. Just last week, you said he was okay."
He hears her snort of laughter, and can imagine her rolling her eyes to go along with it. "Exactly. He's okay. He's fine." Her sarcastic emphasis on the words carries loud and clear through the phone line. "Did he strike you as the type of guy who is ever just fine?"
Matt/John, slight movie AU
Despite John’s best efforts, the kid refuses to become part of the white noise of the city. Loud Mrs. Hanrahan in 1B, the Latino kids from across the street who are always running around on afternoons and weekends, the handful of businessmen that John recognizes on sight, they all conform to expectations and are dismissed from conscious consideration. Patterns are John’s bread and butter as a detective, and the skills that serve him so well at work bleed over into his private life as well. Anomalies represent trouble – unexpected noises, vehicles out of place, people changing their routines.
John/Matt PWP "corduroy"
What Matt was, was soft. Not squishy soft, or girly soft, just. Comfortable. And soft was not an adjective that came up a lot in John's daily life anymore. Neither was fuzzy, for that matter.
And damned if John could tell how he managed it. John's own clothes were comfortable, but some of them were older than Matt. Matt didn't own a single thing that dated earlier than July
He dressed entirely in worn jeans, and ancient t-shirts and sweatshirts. Fall had swooped in on the city while John was busy doing other things, and suddenly Matt was all flannel shirts and corduroy pants and thick socks that deadened the uneven beat of Matt's footsteps in the rare moments when he limped more than a few feet from his desk or his bed.
John had gone through at least ten years of marriage with Holly without having a conversation about shopping. He wasn't going to start now.
John/Matt, underwear
If Matt had been asked, he would've said that John McClane was not a boxer short kind of guy. Hell, if he was McClane, he'd wear a goddamned cup 24/7, because, seriously. As it turned out, "Boxers or Briefs" was about the only question he hadn't been asked about McClane in the past couple months, but he'd given it more thought that he probably should've. Matt hadn't expected to ever have first-hand knowledge of McClane's underwear preferences, unless there was some sort of national emergency that required his pants.
Gabriel and Trey, recruiting
Like all good revolutionaries, they met in a cafe. Trey was in the midst of a debate, well on its way to argument, with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. As he would later learn, it was not Trey's first girlfriend, so not his first ex-, but low enough numbers that he still hadn't quite seen the breakup coming.
He was ripe for the picking, with promises of money, and power, the new elite.
He was gesturing with, or at, a newspaper. Quaint, Thomas thought, and that nearly took Trey out of the running, because, seriously, a newspaper?
Brad/Nate/Walt PWP, "birthday"
Walt's shooting back a good-natured "Fuck you," before he realizes who'd spoken, but then he finishes it off with a belated, "uh, sir?" which might be a question about whether Nate is going to kick his ass, or have someone kick his ass, or maybe whether he should be calling Nate sir still. Brad watches the thoughts flicker across Walt's face like one of those stick-drawing animations, but then he claps a hand on Walt's shoulder and squeezes, a hand-brake to make his thoughts skid to a halt.
"Did Ray...?" Walt broke off, and made a gesture that could have indicated any number of Ray's habitual activities. "Because he said he wouldn't tell anyone."
Ray/Walt, women's underwear
Ray had been thinking about it all day, ways of making it easier for Walt to stay at his place without having to fly the flag of shame that was wearing last night's clothes home in the morning. He'd been thinking about what it'd be like to just fuck, to engage in some hurried, unplanned, disastrously dirty sex without Walt bitching at him later about how he was going to have to scrub jizz off of his t-shirt. That was a totally valid reason to get turned on while standing, alone, in front of his dresser.
The panties he was holding when Walt walked in, those were just a coincidence.
Brad/Nate and others, werewolves
Just as Brad starts easing up from the snow to make a move, the other teams report that they've got lupine company, too. On the one hand, it sucks, but on the other, at least Brad's not the one who's going to be scuttling their night's work. A branch cracks behind him, fuckin' Trombley, and when Brad spares a glance over his shoulder, the growling intensifies. He clears his knife from its sheath, and then there's a single shot, maybe a rifle from a couple hundred meters out and it echoes back from the stone walls, before mixing with what sounds like three or four rounds from a beretta.
The shots take just seconds to get a reaction from inside the compound, but Brad's already in a crouch, ready to get some speed on. There's a call to converge on Command's position, to get back to the vehicles, and that's... If that's fucking Christesen making the call, like it sounds, they are six kinds of fucked. When he spares a half second to glance back for the wolf, it's gone.
Brad/Nate, the one where Nate upends all of Brad’s carefully made plans.
When Brad was fourteen, when he hit his growth spurt, he stuck through three more agonizing weeks of spring soccer practice, demonstrating all the grace of a day-old giraffe on roller-skates, before he quit. The cross-country coach was happy to have him, and Brad was happy to have something to do that was no more complicated than putting on foot in front of the other, over and over.
When he spent every day too skinny, tripping over his own feet, missing the days when his body did what he wanted it to, when he needed it to, and he looked at the strength, the competence, the confidence that the Corps promised to its recruits, and the choice wasn't even a choice.
Brad/Nate schoolteacher AU
The first day of school, Nate got up in front of his class, and wrote his name on the board with a piece of chalk that squeaked, just like every teacher in a bad high-school comedy. Then he turned around and said, "Good morning. I'm Mr. Fick," because the school board discouraged familiarity with the students. Then he said, "and this year we're going to learn everything about the history of the world, so we'd better get started." He said it with a smile, hoping for a little shared humor at the obvious overstatement. He didn't get it, and that was when he started planning his life for what he was going to do next.
Brad/Nate, gaming AU
Nate rocketed up the stairs, his usual stealthy attempts at avoiding his neighbors abandoned in favor of speed. He got the door to his apartment unlocked in what had to be record time, and dumped his bag by the door, not bothering to turn on the lights before he made his way to his desk. A tap of the spacebar woke his computer up, and revealed that Brad's earlier text remained true: the server listing was red all the way down, which meant the devs must have broken something in the first patch and had to try again.
Actually, Brad's message had said, "Because some overpaid, undertrained donkeyfucker refuses to take advantage of a week of data from a stable test environment, our raiding will be delayed this evening." There was the slimmest chance that Brad had been referring to some fuck-up in his office that meant he was going to be late, but it appeared not.
Nate wouldn't like to be the guy whose mistake stood between Brad and patch-day raiding, whether it was someone Brad knew or someone who worked 800 miles away, but if it was a developer, it was less likely that Brad would make them cry.
Ray/Walt, silence
Ray lands on his knees in front of Walt in the kitchen, and almost loses before he starts when his left knee hits the tile too hard and he has to bite back a curse. He could have planned this better, waited for when Walt was on the couch and Ray could kneel on the rug, but it's been two days since Walt last lounged on the couch watching TV, late-night or otherwise. Walt sits at their wobbly kitchen table to eat breakfast and dinner, focused on it like it's his job. He doesn't stand at the counter eating over the sink anymore, which probably would have been faster, but also left him open to Ray coming up behind him and boxing him in.
Zoe/Wash fixit
Late one night, Zoe is as close to deep sleep as her reflexes will let her get when there's this "ooOOooOOoo" sound. Zoe wakes enough to mumble "quit it, Wash" and buries her head under the pillow.
The next morning, she's sitting in the galley and got her hands wrapped around a mug of something warm and supposedly invigorating, and Wash sits down across from her. She screams. Shrieks, actually, like a tightly-wound 9-year-old-princess who's just had a spider dropped down her dress.
Wash jumps up, spins to look behind him like he's expecting there's Reavers breathing down his neck. "What? WHAT?" he yells, and then suddenly every body on Serenity is gathered in the one room, and the good news is, they're all staring at Wash too, so Zoe's not alone in her crazy.
Jensen/Cougar, clubbing
Jensen looks up as Cougar is weaving through the tables on his way to the dance floor, and he freezes for a second before digging his phone out of his pocket. He's cursing at it by the time Cougar is in earshot, and when Jensen looks up, he's a little apologetic and a lot confused. "I'm so sorry man, I don't - I shouldn't have missed a call, even in here. I shouldn't miss a call anywhere, unless every net in a two-state radius goes down. Do I-"
Cougar cuts him off with a dismissive wave. "Nada," he says. "You missed nothing." From a foot away, there is a faint scent of tequila underlying the cloud of alcohol that surrounds him.
Jensen/Cougar, guns
Jensen just wasn’t a gun person. They were useful tools, and he always more than passed any qualifications on a new weapon, or how wouldn’t have a spot on the team, no matter how good he was with a computer. If he didn’t have a gun strapped to his person, his first instinct in an emegency wasn’t to locate a firearm. He just wasn’t a gun person, like how some guys are into cars or bikes and some just aren’t.
Gambit/Wolverine, movieverse amnesia
Logan pushed him up against the wall with a hand at his neck. He asked if Remy was different.
Remy laughed, and rubbed his leg, the only part of him not pinned, against Logan's. Then he laughed again at the quickly-smothered reaction on Logan's face. "How different you want Remy to be?" he purred, and then quieted with a grin when Logan pushed off the wall and growled.
Tunny/Will, or maybe gen
Johnny was up and down, poetry readings, crowded clubs, passed out in the park at sunrise, talking to himself when he wandered the streets at 11am on a Tuesday or 3am Saturday night. Tunny suggested that they should find jobs before the money ran out. Johnny told him to believe in the dream.
They were a two-legged stool without Will, and all that trying to balance exhausted the fuck out of Tunny. An army on the move, though, that was rock-solid, a fuckin’ monolith, not to be trifled with. He could fall in with the ranks and let the mob carry him along; the prospect of not having to make his own judgment calls appealed as much as the recruiter’s promises of glory.
Tunny/Will, left behind
Will was going off to college, and that was fine, that was great, that had been the plan all along, and they’d talk on the phone, and he’d come home over winter break. And when he was home over winter break, it’d be just like if they’d been hanging out the whole time, and it’s not like anything interesting would have happened if Will had stayed.
That was the plan, and it was a good plan, but the plan hadn’t accounted for the hollow feeling in Tunny’s stomach when he stood in his driveway and watched Will jog across the street to his house for the last time before he and his parents got on the road.
It’d been a long time since anyone had left, and it turned out that Tunny wasn’t quite as prepared to handle it as he thought.
Tunny/Will, bondage
When Will opens his eyes again, Tunny’s still leaning patiently against the dresser, watching him. “So, what?” Will says. “Planning on keeping me tied up so you can torture me by eating breakfast without me?” His stomach gurgles again in punctuation, and he swallows the saliva welling in his mouth. The way that Tunny smiles at that is a little staggering, which Will blames on being turned on and confused and hungry and still only half-awake, rather than on the fact that he is head-over-fucking-heels in love with the fucker who’s apparently stealing his clothes and holding him prisoner in his own bedroom. Will’s totally put his emo poetry years behind him, and that means not turning into a puddle every time his boyfriend smiles at him.
Arthur/Eames, first date
To be precise, it happens like this: Arthur is walking along Beecham, considering whether he wants to go home and read, or maybe go for a run, see if he can find a soccer game at the park, when Eames walks out of a storefront gallery and nearly skids to a halt at the sight of him. It takes Eames long enough to recover that Arthur notices that a recovery happened, which speaks to the fact that whatever Eames is doing, he wasn’t worried about surprises. This means he wasn’t prepared for surprises, which means it definitely wasn’t illegal and probably wasn’t immoral.
Arthur/Eames, Eames lifts things so Arthur has to come back and get them
He spends three days off-site, at a library, at corporate headquarters for their target's key rival in the industry, and walking around a resort villa where the subject had proposed to his wife, and he doesn't misplace or forget any of his things.
When he comes back to the loft to walk through two refined mazes, he leaves his tie and then his cell phone again, twice in the next three days. The next morning he sends a vial of the Somnacin off to a contact at one lab, and a vial of his blood off to another. He thinks about going in for a physical, and maybe about keeping a daily journal to make sure that he's not losing time or forgetting anything else.
And then one night, when Arthur had run through his end-of-day checklist, twice, and still had to turn back around. Eames invited him out to dinner at a family-style Italian restaurant where they ordered far too much food and Eames tried to drown Arthur in local late-vintage red wine.
Arthur/Eames, lonely!Eames
In mid-December, Arthur gets a postcard with a picture of the Rose Parade from his mother, postmarked Pasadena. Arthur’s mother can be found in Boca Raton from October through March. The card finds him via the PO Box in Los Angeles, and it's the closest thing he's likely to ever get to an invitation.
It is undeniably stupid. Arthur is tempted to show up just to tell Eames how stupid it is.
Arthur/Eames, wedding jitters
He's halfway through a pack of Marlboros even though he hasn't smoked for years. It would have been a bottle of cheap vodka, but one of the joys of travelling to a state where Eames is preparing to put his legal name on a legal document to legally tie himself to another man for so long as they both shall live is not being able to buy liquor before noon on a Sunday.
Arthur/Eames, werewolf
It was only by sheer luck that he hadn't managed to imprint one of the many vapid girls who'd caught his attention when he was young and stupid and hormonal, when anyone with a beating heart had smelled like true love.
If he was being honest, early retirement was looking like something of a necessity. The older he got, while more and more of his contemporaries were rolling around like puppies in the park with their children, the more that the urge to claim something as his grew.
By the time that Arthur came into his life, it was nearly overwhelming.
Arthur/Eames, small town
Eames comes in looking for books published by local authors, local historical societies, because the historical society is only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and he had the poor luck to arrive in town on a Wednesday morning.
"Oh, no," he says. "I don't expect to be in the area above a week or two." He looks around at the empty tables, and then over his shoulder to the also-empty study rooms opposite the desk. "It's not a problem that I work here, is it?
Oh, thank you, God Arthur thinks, but what he says is, "No problem at all."
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 09:42 pm (UTC)